Sowing Tears of Joy

Posted on Sep 01, 2020 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Men's Christian Living, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : F. LaGard Smith

October 1

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

—Psalm 126:5-6

“No pain, no gain” is as true as it is trite. Each of us has more than proved this obvious truth simply by emerging into the world at the cost of great pain to our mothers who—despite the pain—were filled with joy. Today’s featured passage is all about pain and gain. About exile and restoration. Resignation and exhilaration. Hopelessness and hope.

For the Israelites, seventy years of scorn, rebuke, and humiliation certainly had gotten their attention! It could just as easily have backfired, generating bitterness and resentment against God. Indeed many of the Jews died during the exile, having never witnessed the promised restoration. Not all tears reap joy. It is only after we finally emerge from the pain that we can fully appreciate what we have gone through to get there. In the midst of the ordeal itself, there is mostly pain—not gain.

So what about those who, throughout an entire lifetime on Earth, never seem to experience joy? There are millions of hurting individuals whose often tragically brief lives are filled only with tears, whether shed or unshed. They’re the truly hungry. They’re perpetually struck by disease. They’re oppressed and brutalized, dreading the approaching shadows of each night. Yet even while living in these dire circumstances, they have the chance to know true fulfillment if they have faith in God’s promises.

For those of us fortunate enough never to experience such abject horror and despair, what greater joy we might feel if somehow, someway we could actually increase our lesser pain in order to lessen their greater pain, if we could sacrifice some of our own comfort in order that they could gain it. Though we cannot, we must believe and share the transformative power of God’s truth. For all of us, of course, the ultimate joy can never be known in this life—only in the life to come when we will look back on whatever degree of pain we have known as if it never existed!